In this Research and Academic Program lecture, Alice Micelli (Independent scholar, Rio de Janeiro and New York City) exposes the tangled relationship between cities and warfare. Drawing on her research into battles like Stalingrad, Fallujah, and Mosul, she explores how urban landscapes force armies to adapt their strategies—and how the chaos of combat, in turn, reshapes these spaces physically, psychologically, and culturally. Micelli’s work bridges military history, geography, and visual storytelling, grounded in collaborations with historians, soldiers, and artists. Together, they have asked: what does it mean for an army to truly “see” a city during war? How do tactics born in the rubble of Ortona or Suez echo in today’s conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East? Micelli shares how her fieldwork and archival discoveries—including from the Clark’s collections—reveal that the way we document war doesn’t just record history; it actively shapes how wars are fought and remembered. She aims to reframe how we perceive these battles—not as distant tragedies, but as evolving dialogues between strategy, survival, and how we position ourselves to witness the complicated realities of warfare in a world where cities are both weapons and victims.

A 5 pm reception in the Manton Research Center reading room precedes the event.

Image: Capt. Gregory Walsh, US Army